It is summer and I read a lot during this time of the year. I often slide between some technical book (currently reading extreme hacking) and fun books. The book I just finished was “Odd Thomas” by Dean Koontz. I have read a few of his books and they are always entertaining. YOu can find out more here http://www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/koontz/ot_book.html

Very good read. And also quick. I do have to say the ending caught me off guard.

This week I have been able to see and test a lot of new programs.
1. google earth (earth.google.com) Essentially it is keyhole (a program google purchased) on crack. They added all the great features of google maps to this sat image program. If you have not tried it, go download. It’s free.
2. Google Video player. I had heard about this earlier this month from some blog site. Google released a VLC (video Lan client) that is called the google video player. It is pretty good. I have used the vlc client before (also had some issues with the vls - video lan server.. but that is a different story) . If you have not tried this software you should give it a whirl. I use it to stream DVD’s at work to people who may want to watch.
3. Itunes new release - it has a podcasting manager in it. I have downloaded and installed but have not tried the new feature. Looks nice and easy to use like most apple applications.
4. AJAX support in .net 2.0. I read a story on slashdot about upcoming client side javascript (AJAX) being built into 2.0 framework.

Well I have many ideas on how to update and modify the IIS reporter application I have written. I have finally got VS2005 up and running on my machine and will try to migrate IIS reporter over to 2.0.

I have a few releases I need to get up to the source server. I also have a web service version that I need to make public to allow others who are more gifted in programming to take a look and modify. More to come….

For those who know me, I am in the middle of training for a Marathon. The Chicago Marathong (LINK) is October 9, 2005. I am excited and also a bit afraid of running 26 miles.

I have put in my first few weeks of training, this last weekend I got a 6 and an 8 mile run in. So if you see me on the road, give a honk or wave.

Well I finally got around to looking at google sitemaps (googlesitemaps). If you don’t already have a google account (gmail acount also) just register for one. I have been wanting to test this service out. So I embarked on creating a simple xml (sitemap based file) for this site. I downloaded the python script and started to run it. I do like python but figured since I was running windows and did not have python on this computer I would do some looking. I found a great application called Gsitemap (http://www.vigos.com/products/gsitemap/)
It is a little .net app that lets you use a gui to make a google sitemap file. The nice part about this is you can do mutiple sites quickly.

One thing to mention is that I found the software on my work computer. When I got home and wanted to try it. I googled for about 15 min and could not find any reference to it. Then I got to thinking, I could just use my google search history. And so, I kicked myself for being stupid and found the link and download in less than a min. Way to go Google.

I had a great week at teched. Here is a quick summary of some interesting things I learned.

Architecture program from microsoft. Microsoft has an architecture advisory board. I met a member of that board at TechEd - Jim Wilt. You can read more here http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/

IIS 7.0 - Is too long in coming and has all of us Admins waiting and drooling over the features

GotDotNet - They are funded by MS and will be updating their site and systems soon. The guys there know of their current issues and plan on making a better solution

VS Search - I meet some of the developers for VS2005 search and they will have a community search system that will allow you to search for code from some of your favorite code sites.

Great new software tools, to make my life easier - too many to mention here. I will have to update my favorite software list once I get a change to install and test each one.

VS2005 - can’t wait for this to launch. There are so many features that I can use to make my life easier. Master pages, the option to use code behind pages or not. Intelisense that works almost anywhere, Design mode “will not change your code”.

SQL2005 - Too many things to talk about here. 1st - They gave all TechEd attendees a free copy. (That was not cheap). The ability to expose data via HTTP or https on the sql server with out IIS. You can almost code a full featured site in just SQL.

And the final thing. Microsoft knows how to throw a party. They rented out Universal Studios. Yes the theme park.

One of the great sessions I attended was about ASP.Net 2.0 and Master Pages.
The idea is that you can create a master page that all other pages bind from. This concept
is similar to a tempate design but with a master page you can lock in certain page variables and attributes that
you would like an entire site or area of a site to have. An example of this would be a Consistant variable or type of
menu system. I was very pleased to see how easy they made this intergration in 2.0. I will post some examples once I get VS2005beta working.

I have been so busy here in Orlando, I have not been able to post any more info. I have attended so many sessions and Cabana’s that I am overwhelmed.
First things first, IIS 7.0 will rock. They have taken a modular approach to how you can configure and extend IIS. This allows an administrator to either lockdown a server by removing specific components or allows a developer to add specific components on either a particular website or a vitual web space. They have done a ton of work with the admin tool, it too is much easier to use and also delegate rights. I will post some examples of a config file with my next entry.
One down side is that IIS 7.0 is not due to be released until 2006 w/ Longhorn. I hope there may be a chance to get some type of feature pack on iis6 that would contain some of the new features.

I am attending Teched 2005 (www.microsoft.com/teched). Today is registration day. I was riding the shuttle to the conference center and happened upon one of the IIS Server team members from Microsoft. That is a trip, I work with IIS amlost every day and was hoping to gain some information on the new version. The individual I met from microsoft is very involved in the IIS 7.0 development and testing.
I learneda lot about the new version.
More secure, has modules, and will have more configuration options.

I will post some pics and more info as the week went on.
TechEd is Huge, the conference center is very large. I also saw some interesting things, Microsoft Teched / Visualstudio busses.